Running a Study Permit and a Spousal Open Invariably Work Permit Side by Side, Priced Out

The common assumption is that filing everything together must be cheaper — one household, one submission, presumably one lower bill. The cost of running a study permit and a spousal permit together doesn’t actually work that way, because almost every fee in the file is charged per person, and applying together only changes one line item, not all of them.

The study permit side

The study permit fee, including extensions, is $150 per person. That’s fixed regardless of what else the household is filing alongside it, and it doesn’t shrink because a spouse’s application is attached to the same household.

The spousal open work permit side

A spousal open work permit costs more than most people expect, because it’s actually two fees stacked together: the standard work permit fee of $155, plus a separate open work permit holder fee of $100. That’s $255 for the spouse alone, before biometrics — a detail that gets missed because the two charges are easy to mistake for one. On the payment page they show up as two distinct line items rather than a single combined charge, which is exactly the moment a household budgeting from an old blog post or a friend’s recollection gets caught out.

Biometrics — the one place applying together actually matters

Biometrics run $85 per person, but there’s a family cap of $170 for two or more people applying at the same time. For a couple of exactly two, that cap and the individual rate land in the same place — two people at $85 each is $170, which is what the family cap charges anyway. So does applying together save money over separate applications? For a couple, on the government fee alone, not really. The cap becomes genuinely valuable once a child joins the file, because a third biometric collection doesn’t push the family total past $170 at all.

A combined fees for a student and spouse applying together, worked total

Add it up: $150 for the study permit, $255 for the spousal open work permit, and $170 for biometrics filed together. That’s a worked total for two linked Canadian applications of $575 in federal fees alone — before an ECA, a medical exam, a police certificate, translations, courier costs, or anything a consultant might charge on top.

What the $575 doesn’t include

That figure is the government’s cut, nothing else. It says nothing about the document-legalisation costs on the South African side, the cost of a police clearance certificate, or private insurance to bridge a provincial healthcare waiting period once the family lands. Any household using $575 as “the cost of the move” is going to be badly surprised a few months in.

The honest summary is this: applying together doesn’t discount the permit fees, and it only modestly helps on biometrics once there’s a third person in the file. What it does buy is administrative convenience — one household submitting on one timeline — which is worth something, just not a lower total on the invitation letter. Fees like these also move over time, so treat $575 as a snapshot rather than a fixed number, and confirm the current figures on IRCC’s own fee page before budgeting a firm amount. For a fuller settlement-cost picture beyond the government fee line, Cape2Canada’s guides walk through what typically sits outside this figure.